Team Building the Hard Way
by Wenwalke
Summary: The governor orders the members of Five-0 to go on a team building excursion. But they get more than they bargained for.


**A/N: **This story is set early in Season 3 and is in honour of cargumentluv's birthday. A big thank you to rewob17 for checking this over in record time.

**Summary:** The governor orders the members of Five-0 to go on a team building excursion. But they get more than they bargained for.

**Team Building the Hard Way**

"This is all, your, fault, Steven." Danny griped as he trudged along behind Kono.

"What? Why is this my fault?" Steve asked from his position at the rear of the procession that was currently the Five-0 team. "It was you that decided to argue with me in front of the Governor. It was you that pissed him off enough to order us on a, 'team building excursion,' to quote him."

"Maybe so, but it was you that jumped at the chance to come out here into the jungle." Danny brushed an insect off his arm, he hated insects. "We could have gone to the indoor paintball range like he also suggested. At least there it wouldn't be wet from last night's rain, and there wouldn't be all these damn insects." Danny swatted another insect that had been biting his arm.

"Danny …" Steve began but was cut off by Chin.

"Stop it, both of you." Chin commanded from his place in front of Steve in the line. "I have to be here, because of you two, fine. But I don't have to listen to the two of you behaving like children. No wonder the governor mandated this little excursion."

"He started it," both Danny and Steve said at the same time.

"Children," Kono now joining in the conversation. "We are only halfway around this trail. If I have to listen to this for the rest of the way I'll smack you both upside the head when we get back."

"Let's take a break." Chin said five minutes later. They'd been walking up a fairly steep trail and had now reached the top where a picnic table was conveniently situated. The rest of the trip back would be all down hill and Chin figured a rest and refreshments would be good. It also gave him time to try and find out what was bugging the two partners. They always argued, good-naturedly, but the last couple of weeks their arguing seemed more than that.

Once everyone was seated with water and a snack, Chin asked the question both he and Kono had wanted to ask for the last two weeks. "What happened between the two of you on that drug case two weeks ago? I know that something happened because that's when all this arguing started."

"Nothing happened." Steve answered quickly, too quickly.

Danny looked at his partner and shook his head. "Yeah, nothing happened, except Overprotective SEAL over there decided I couldn't handle my own collar. I was all set to take the guy down, when out of nowhere, Bat SEAL flies in and knocks him down and cuffs him."

"I thought he was going to shoot you, Danny." Steve rejoined.

"His gun was empty and pointed at the ground, dimwit." Danny yelled back. "How was he going to shoot me?"

"I didn't notice that, at the time." Steve admitted.

"All that Army training was wasted on you if you can't tell when a perp is giving up." Danny stood. "I'm ready to go." He said as he headed out onto the trail.

"For the last time it's the Navy, Danny." Steve called after him a hurt look in his eyes.

Kono jumped up and followed Danny, but not before she gave Chin a look that said, fix this.

Chin put a restraining hand on Steve's arm when he made to follow Danny and Kono. "Tell me what's really going on with you?" He asked.

Steve sighed and ran a hand over his face. "I was scared, Chin. It was only a week before that he was shot in the arm by Ron, on the Aloha Girls camping trip."

"So you overreacted." Chin stated.

"Yeah, I guess I did." Steve admitted.

"Then talk to him. Tell him why you did what you did." Chin headed out onto the trail, Steve following behind him. "Let's catch up to them. This trail is really slippery and we should stick together."

"Plus Kono will never let us live it down if we can't keep up with them." Steve laughed. As they hurried to catch up with their teammates Steve thought about what Chin had said. Soon he realised, Chin was right. He needed to talk to Danny and explain why he'd acted as if Danny couldn't handle himself, when really he could.

They were almost up to Kono and Danny, who had just rounded a corner in the trail, when they heard a scream from Kono and Danny yelled, "KONO!"

Chin and Steve burst around the corner and stopped dead. The trail was gone, wiped away by a mud slide. Kono lay on the other side of the slide, but there was no sign of Danny anywhere.

"Kono, are you alright?" Chin called.

"Danny! Danny!" Steve yelled, franticly looking down the small gully now filled with mud.

Kono rolled over and sat up. "I'm fine. Danny pushed me out of the way." She looked around. "Where's Danny?" Kono asked in a panic as she jumped to her feet.

Steve was already down at the bottom of the gully looking for his partner. He had to call on all his training as a Navy SEAL to keep himself from panicking. Chin followed him down, Kono doing the same on the other side of the slide.

"Over here!" Kono called as she knelt down next to some branches carried down with the mud. "I found him."

Steve and Chin worked their way around the end of the slide as Kono edged deeper into the tree branches.

Chin started clearing the loose branches out of the way as Steve removed his pack then crawled in next to Kono, needing to see his partner, to know that he was alright.

"He pushed me out of the way, Steve." Kono repeated what she'd said earlier, tears running down her face. She sat, in the mud, with Danny's head resting on her lap, running her fingers through his hair.

Steve checked the pulse at Danny's neck, it was strong and steady. He could see a gash on the left side of Danny's head, blood running freely from it, which explained why he was unconscious. Danny was covered in branches and mud almost to his neck. It wouldn't be easy getting him out of all this. Steve hoped there were no other injuries under all the debris, but until Danny regained consciousness, or they got him out, they wouldn't know. They'd have to go carefully.

"Kono," Steve spoke quietly as he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "You stay with Danny. Chin and I are going to start clearing the branches, okay?"

At Kono's nod, Steve moved back out and retrieved his pack. He removed a medical kit from the pack and placed it on a rock out of the mud. Then he took an antiseptic wipe and a dressing from the kit and crawled back in to where Kono still sat holding Danny. It took only a couple of minutes for Steve to clean the head wound and apply the dressing. Danny groaned, but didn't wake as Steve worked.

Once done, Steve backed back out and started to help Chin with the bigger branches as they tried to clear a path so they could extract Danny from the mud.

Chin had called Search and Rescue, as soon as he realised that Danny was under the branches and mud. But it would take them at least an hour to reach their location. Time he hoped that Danny had.

A few minutes later they had a path cleared and started to remove branches that were on top of Danny.

Kono still sat, running her fingers through Danny's hair. A groan alerted her to the fact that Danny was now conscious. "Hey, Danny, good to have you back, brah."

Steve stopped what he was doing and knelt beside his partner. "Danno, I need you to tell me what hurts."

Two blue eyes opened and looked up at the SEAL. "Everything hurts, you idiot. I got tossed around in a mud slide."

Steve sighed, "But does anything hurt worse, apart from your head. That has a pretty nasty cut on it."

"No. I don't think anything else hurts too badly, but I can't move my legs." Danny answered, his eyes closing again.

"Hey, stay awake." Steve commanded tapping Danny's right cheek. "What do you mean you can't move you legs?"

Danny's eyes crept open again. "I thought that was self explanatory." Just then Chin removed a large branch and Danny gasped and rolled over onto his left side.

Steve put his hand on Danny right shoulder trying to stop him from moving. "Danny, lie still. If you can't move you legs you shouldn't be rolling around."

"I'm fine. That branch was the reason I couldn't move my legs, with it gone I'm good." Danny raised his right knee as he spoke. His left knee soon came up to join his right. "How about you get me out of all this mud, huh?"

"No. I don't want to move you. We'll let Search and Rescue …" Steve started to say, but Danny cut him off.

"Steven, I'm not staying in this mud bath until Search and Rescue get here. Now either you help me out, or I get out by myself." Danny said adamantly.

"Steve, Danny's right." Chin inserted before Steve could reply. "It will take Search and Rescue another hour to get here and it looks like there's more rain coming. We can't leave Danny here in case more mud slides down."

Steve looked up at the sky and then back down to Danny. "Alright, we'll move you, but you are to just lie still and let us do all the work."

At Danny's slight nod, Steve stepped to the other side and Chin moved in. With Kono holding Danny's head, the three teammates where able to lift Danny out of the mud and move him over to a flat area to the side. Kono again sat with Danny's head in her lap while Steve looked his partner over for any other injuries.

Once they were settled, Kono spoke. "Thanks for pushing me out of the way, Danny."

"You're welcome, Kono. I didn't mean to get caught in the slide though." Danny admitted.

Steve had just finished his examination of Danny when the heavens opened and they were caught in the middle of a downpour.

Kono leaned over and tried to keep the rain off Danny's face, but Steve used the downpour to clean some of the mud off Danny in an attempt to see if he had any injuries he'd missed.

"Will you stop that?" Danny complained. "I'm not your sex toy. Stop feeling me up, would you."

"Danny, I'm not feeling you up, as you so eloquently put it. I'm trying to remove some of this mud so I can see if you have any injuries I missed." Steve sighed in exasperation.

"I'm going back up to the trail," Chin said out of the blue. "Kono, why don't you come with me?"

Kono looked a her cousin for a few seconds, than as if she could read his mind, which Danny was pretty sure she could, Kono agreed with Chin. She moved out from under Danny's head and placed her pack there to keep his head up out of the mud.

Chin looked between the two partners before he spoke. "You two, sort out what's bothering you." With that the cousins left and climbed back up to the trail.

Danny looked at Steve. "What the hell's he talking about?" he asked.

"I told him, back when we stopped, why I overreacted at the drug takedown, and he said I should have talked to you about it and not let this arguing get so out of hand." Steve sat next to Danny as he spoke. "He's right. I should have talked to you. Told you how I felt when I thought that guy was going to shoot you."

For once Danny was quiet and let his partner talk. It wasn't often that Steve opened up to him the way he was doing now. So Danny figured he'd better just listen.

"I, I was scared, Danny. You were right. I didn't even notice his gun was pointed down. All I knew was that I couldn't let you get shot, right in front of me, again. I don't want to lose you." Steve was looking down, not at his partner. If he had been he would have seen Danny come to the realization of why Steve had been such a dimwit, as he'd recently called him.

Danny moved his right hand to clasp Steve's. "Oh babe, you're not going to lose me."

When Steve made no move to look at him, Danny moved his other hand to encase Steve's in both of his. "Look at me, okay." When Steve finally looked up, Danny continued. "I'm right here babe. I'm not going anywhere. But you have to give me some space. You can't protect me from everything. I know that Ron shooting me upset you, but I thought you were over that?"

"Yeah, I thought so too. But that takedown proved both of us wrong." Steve squeezed Danny's hand. "I'll try and tone down the over protectiveness, if you stop getting into those situations in the first place." Steve indicated the mud slide a few feet away from them.

"Well, you know, with a partner like mine, that's not an easy thing to do." Danny said with a mischievous smile on his face.

"Fair enough, but I didn't get you into this situation. You managed this all by yourself, playing the hero and pushing Kono out of the way."

"Not true. I beg to differ on that one." Danny said, still smiling. "If you hadn't been such a jerk while we rested, Kono and I wouldn't have left when we did. Ergo, we wouldn't have been on that part of the trail when the mud slide happened. So, this," Danny waved his hand down his still mud covered body. "This is all, your, fault, babe."

Steve looked at the mischief still in Danny's eyes and couldn't help smiling. "Ergo, really? Alright, I'll give you that one. Now lay still, Search and Rescue will be here soon."

Danny was taken to the hospital to be checked over. He'd argued against it as he claimed he only had a graze on his head. But Chin had overruled any argument before it developed between the partners. Stating that for all their piece of minds, the least Danny could do was to get a clean bill of health from a professional.

Steve stood, wisely, in the background during this discussion. There was no way that Danny was not going to the hospital, but he'd let Chin do the arguing this time.

Of course Danny was proved right. His only injury, apart from lots of bruising, was the graze on his head. However, the doctor said he had a slight concussion, and that meant he couldn't be left alone for 24 to 48 hours.

"Awe, please Kono. Let me stay with you, or better yet, you stay with me for a couple of days." At Kono's headshake, Danny turned to Chin, "Please man. Don't make me stay with the overprotective SEAL."

"Sorry Danny." Chin soothed. "We already decided while we were waiting. "Steve will be looking after you. Kono and I will be over tomorrow night for a cookout." Chin looked at Danny for a minute then said, "He needs this Danny." And Danny suddenly understood.

Steve walked into the trauma bay, Danny's release papers in his hand. "Okay, good to go, Danny. I signed the papers for you."

"What, you couldn't even let me sign myself out of here?" Just because he understood why Steve needed him to stay with him, didn't mean he had to go easily.

"Nope, I'm responsible for you, so I get to sign." Steve moved over and helped Danny off the bed and into a waiting wheelchair. "Come on, let's get you home and into bed."

The look that passed between the cousins at Steve's remark had Danny throwing his arms up in exasperation. "What have I told you about making comments like that, Steven? Enough people have the wrong idea about us as it is, without you adding fuel to the fire."

"Yeah, well you know you love me, Danny." Steve said smiling brightly.

"Maybe so, but we don't need to broadcast it to the world, do we?" Danny said smiling just as brightly as his partner.

"You two are **incorrigible**," Chin said as he followed them out of the room.

"Yeah, that's why you love us, too." Danny and Steve both said in unison.

**The End**


End file.
